Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Welcome to Dreamland

Written 11 December, 2006

My Volcano

II. Welcome to Dreamland

After I made the purchase (L$19,999, about $75 US; I had to transfer in money via Paypal), I IMed Dreamland. Carcinia Polano teleported to the property and provided me with a marker that sent my browser to the Dreamland site, where I set up tier fees ($24 U.S., monthly). Think of tier fees as property taxes—but wait! I pay property taxes on my first-life house only once a year! What’s with this monthly hit?

I took a look at the covenant. No skyboxes under 250 meters. Okay. No clubs or commercial enterprises. Okay. No eyesores. Okay. Whatever Dreamland says is an eyesore is an eyesore, no appeal.

What?

I started to get an uneasy feeling. What if I wanted to fill the beach with cars stuck up on blocks?

The covenant said the basic nature of the land could not be changed. I wasn’t sure just what that meant. Did it mean I couldn’t flatten the land, doing away with the volcano (not that I would want to), or that I couldn’t modify it in any way? I knew I wouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t build in an erupt mode? /erupt on /erupt off /doomsday on /doomsday off.

Attempting to get answers to questions from Dreamland was more than difficult; this was possibly due to language difficulties, as the Dreamland employees are in China. I was told I would need to get permission to terraform the land. I IMed the terraformer. Several times. No reply. I sent a notecard, with specifics of my planned changes, to two Dreamland personnel: Carcinia and Thomas the terraformer. No reply.

That’s why I was interested when Carcinia showed up on the beach bum’s property. I got to see just what a violation of the covenant entailed.

And I was learning about that-- until McCall interfered, of course.

When it became clear Knight whomever was going to lose his property (he had never even set up tier fees, so it was technically a seizure because of failure to pay taxes), I IMed Carcinia and had a discussion with her and another Dreamland agent about getting first rights to the forfeited property.

Dreamland would contact me shortly, they said. I waited anxiously all weekend, but it didn’t happen. On Monday, I checked the land, and the property had been rented to someone named -- no, I won't name him. I IMed Carcinia.

You didn’t get back in touch with us, she said. “It’s too late. The land has been rented.”

Welcome to Dreamland.


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Photo: Dreamland world headquarters

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